Author 




Title 



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19—47372-3 OPO 



A U D li E S S 



BEFORE THE 



HISTOEICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



28th January, 1848. 



ON THE OCCASION OF OPENING THE HALL IN 
THE ATHEJSr.EUM. 



WILLIAM B. REED. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
C. SHERMAN, PRINTER. 

19 ST. JAArES S'l'RKKT. 

1848. 



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Hall of the Historical Society of Pexnsylvania. 
February 14, 1848. 
Sir, 

I have the honour to communicate the following resolution, passed 
at a meeting of the Historical Society held this evening. 

On motion of Doctor A. L. Elwyn, it was resolved, That the 
thanks of the Society be presented to Mr. Reed, for his Address, de- 
livered on the 28th ult., and that a copy be requested for publication. 

I am, very respectfully, 
Your obedient servant, 

Edward Arsistrong, 

Recording Secretary. 
William B. Reed, Esquire. 



ADDRESS, 



The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has desired 
me to present a simple and precise exposition of its 
design, success, and prospects. It is, and always has 
been an unpretending Association, whose councils have 
been secluded, and v^^hich has never, that I am aware 
of, obtruded itself on public attention. It is neither 
rich nor ambitious, and has one merit of honest po- 
verty, it is, I believe, out of debt. There are very 
many of our fellow-citizens who do not know of its ex- 
istence, and no doubt some, whose only sentiment to- 
wards us is kindred to contemptuous indifference. 

For twenty-two years, a few gentlemen interested in 
memories of the past, have been in the habit of monthly 
association, and have co-operated to collect materials 
and open sources of information, from which the his- 
torian, by and by, will frame his narrative, and for 
which he, at least, will thank us. 

It is not my intention to tell the history of this In- 



stitution. Its career has been very noiseless and bar- 
ren of incident. 

The nineteen original constituents of the Society, 
who signed the charter in 1826, were William Rawle, 
Roberts Vaux, Joseph Hopkinson, Joseph Reed, Tho- 
mas C. James, John Sergeant, Thomas I. Wharton, 
Thomas H. White, Caspar Wistar, George W. Smith, 
Gerard Ralston, William M. Walmsley, Daniel B. 
Smith, William Rawle, Jr., Charles J. Ingersoll, Ed- 
ward Settle, Thomas M. Pettit, B. H. Coates, and 
William M. Meredith. Of these, the dead or the liv- 
ing, it is unnecessary to say a word. 

There is one individual, however, who is yet amongst 
us, and to whom, unobtrusive as his career has been, 
I have some delicacy in thus publicly referring ; 
yet I will venture to do so, not for the purpose 
of compliment, of which he would be very careless, 
but because the cause of local history is under sub- 
stantive obligations to him — greater far than to any 
one amongst us. I mean Mr. Hazard, the Curator of 
this Society and Editor of the Register of Pennsyl- 
vania — a work which every one, who desires to learn 
anything of the remote or recent history of the State, 
knows to be invaluable, and which will always be a 
monument of the author's singular industry and accu- 
racy. No other state in this Union can boast of any- 
thing like it. It is essential, as I have some shght 
means of knowing, to the public man — to all who have 



occasion to learn anything of Pennsylvania or her 
affairs. The time is not far distant, when Mr. 
Hazard's great work will be appreciated, and full 
justice be done to his modest labours. I am most 
happy thus incidentally, and perhaps inappropri- 
ately, to refer to one, of whom this Society should 
be proud, but who never has, and I am sure never 
will put forward any claim for public approval. In 
days of obtrusive sciolism, it is pleasant to have a 
chance of praising modest merit* 

I have no other personal allusions to make. But 
I have a few words to say, and they will be said in 
a most desultory manner, (such, on this occasion, 
being the wish of the Society and my own,) of our 
local history — its interest and value — the necessity 
of its study, and the aid which a Society like this, 
properly administered, can render. 

The duties of an Historical Society are not only the 
collection, but the scrutiny of original materials. It 
by no means follows, because a document is old that it 
is curious or valuable ; and a Society ought to have 
within itself the capacity of making the discrimination. 
If it has not, the chance is, that it will very soon be- 
come the receptacle of antique trash. In the collection 

* Mr. Hazard is now engaged in the preparation of a new work of 
" Pennsylvania Annals," beginning at the Swedish settlements and 
coming down to a recent period. 



and preservation of materials, a society can do much 
for which individual action is inadequate. There is 
a class of materials which it is our especial duty 
to preserve. I refer to public documents, and with- 
in certain limits, newspapers. Let any one attempt 
a minute historical investigation, and he will appre- 
ciate this duty. Books of biography and general his- 
tory may be procured by individuals, and are within 
the compass of private libraries ; but vain would be the 
attempt, and intolerable the burden of accumulation, 
to comprise within any four walls of ordinary construc- 
tion, the vast production, even of the official press of 
the country or of the State. Yet it is well worth pre- 
servation — the " ha'penny worth of bread in all this 
sack" is essential to the student — and there should be 
some depositary for everything in the form of a public 
document, to which there may be easy access. That 
depositary, an Historical Society can be, even better 
than a General Circulating Library — though the de- 
fect in this particular of libraries in other respects 
complete, is much to be deplored. The City Library, 
of which we are so justly proud, is rather a library for 
distribution than reference, and will continue to be so, 
so long as students are limited to the post-prandial, 
twiliofht hours at which it is now accessible. No one 
in Philadelphia is supposed to w^ant to study till he 
eats his dinner. 



An Historical Society should be a sort of " Intelli- 
gence Office" for manuscripts and other original mate- 
rials. No one, who is curious in such matters, can be 
expected to bestow, on a public institution, private col- 
lections made with labour and expense ; but this So- 
ciety ought at least to know where these collections are. 
Besides, there are hundreds of interesting manuscript 
memorials of the past, neglected or carelessly regarded 
by their owners, that with proper effort on our part, 
will here find refuge; and can be easily referred to 
without the restraint which surrounds every private 
curiosity collection. An Historical Society ought, I 
repeat, to know where all such things are to be found, 
so that when the stranger student comes hither on an 
errand of investigation, we may render him the assis- 
tance he desires. Having these objects in view some 
years ago, in our days of restricted means and de- 
pressed energies, a committee was appointed, in order 
to ascertain what private papers of value were in exis- 
tence in Philadelphia, as well as their condition and 
chances of preservation. I am unable to say what was 
done under this appointment. Probably, in the cold 
and discouraging atmosphere, in which public neglect 
has compelled us to pursue our labours, this resolution, 
like many others, perished at its birth.* 



* Autograph hunters, directory and ahiiaunc collectors — all who 
indulge amiable and whimsical cui'iosity ought here to be ticketed 



10 

This Society may be made a place of communion in 
the special branch of literature for which it was in- 
stituted — where those interested in such studies, may 
be sure to find companions and fellow-students — where 
the young man, who is tracing out some line of histo- 
rical investigation that has attracted his fancy, may 
find counsel and assistance from those who have more 
maturely studied the same thing — whither the older 
student may also come and gain from the active and 
suggestive minds of younger men, ideas and details of 
knowledge which have escaped him. Where all in- 
terested in this pursuit may meet on the ^ame broad 
platform, and freely, with a precise object in view, 
think and talk together. In this hope, it has been the 
steady effort of a majority of this Society, to popularise 
it, and to invite rather than discourage accessions to 
our ranks. If there be one thing more absurd in 
this country than any other, it is the close borough- 
ing of literary associations of liberal design and pro- 
fessions — the employment by Science, or History, or 
Philosophy of a corps of janitors to guard their doors 
and watch the entrance — the enforcement of strict and 



and reo-istered ; for many a time it happens lo the student, that a 
signature, a date of time or place, the residence of a private citizen, 
or the condition of the tide — or some such apparently insignificant 
item — has an interest and value which the thankless reader little 
imagines. No one, who has not laboured on these details, knows the 
delight of lighting on mmute evidence thus discovered. 



11 

arbitrary rules, generally having their origin in the 
whims and prejudices of those who have themselves, 
in all probability, crawled in under some bar of exclu- 
sion. Such, I repeat, is not, and I trust never will be 
the folly of this Society. It may be very humble in 
its attractions, but it is not exclusive. The two most 
effective associations in this city — the Franklin Insti- 
tute and Academy of Natural Science — are before us 
to attest the success of a liberal and inviting policy. 



These generally are our objects — these our hopes 
and wishes ; but all dependent for consummation on 
the kindness and co-operation of our fellow-citizens 
around us, at whose hands we do not ask pecuniary 
patronage, but whom we merely ask to come amongst 
us, and to encourage us by occasional and friendly asso- 
ciation. We ask Pennsylvanians and Philadelphians 
not to be ashamed of their ow^n history. If I were not 
afraid, in these times when everything like enthu- 
siasm, or pride of name, or patriotism is superseded or 
thrust aside by some mercenary pursuit or absurd ro- 
mantic medieval sentimentalism, I would ask them to 
be, as well they may, proud of their own history. 

Of the value of that history — I speak, too, especially 
of Pennsylvania history — it is not my design to speak. 
No one wdll seriously question it. The most imprac- 
ticable student of rusty antiquity — he who wastes his 



12 

literary leisure and scholar-like tastes on useless 
things of useless times — who disturbs kind sympa- 
thy with those about him by retrospects to days of 
iron bigotry and fierce exaggeration — even he, while 
he turns away from our simple annals, will admit their 
value. All he says is, that they have no interest for 
him. On the other hand, and with another class, do- 
mestic cottons and woollens, domestic carpets, and 
knives and forks, and bottles are encouraged, but few 
think or care for domestic history. 

And what, let me ask in all candour, is known of 
that which is thus decried? Nothing — literally no- 
thing. When a book of American history or biogra- 
phy by some strange accident is read, the prevalent 
sentiment is surprise that it is so interesting. I will 
undertake to say, that there is not a human being, 
within the sound of my voice, who does not know^ 
more of Grecian, or Roman, or English, or Ecclesias- 
tical history than he does of the 170 years that have 
elapsed since William Penn landed on these shores. 

It is in no vulgar spirit of local self-complacency — 
no disparagement of other studies that I say this. I 
state an unquestioned fact. — Ignorance of our history 
is a reproach abroad and at home. Far from dispa- 
raging other studies, I would encourage them, but 
always in strict subordination to interest in what is 
local. Whilst in the most catholic spirit, I would, 
within appreciable limits, enlarge the circle of study 



13 

and reading — never would I so far extend it that the 
attraction of the centre should be lost. There is many 
a book alien in title and apparent character, which the 
intellio-ent American student will find fruitful of sug- 
o-estions and lessons for us and ours. But there are stu- 
dies which are utterly, and in my poor judgment, per- 
niciously alien— theoretically and practically useless ; 
these and all such I would reject, as unworthy an Ame- 
rican student's sight or thought. I never see the mind 
of American man or woman turned outward, or back- 
ward, and wasted on foreign or obsolete studies with- 
out deep and most honest regret. The poet's rule is 
true in study as in morals : 

" To make a happy ^/'esiWe clime 
That's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 

That which bears upon our local destinies as Ame- 
ricans ought to be beyond everything the object of our 
serious studies. 

I have said that the intelligent student will find 
much of direct, domestic interest in books, whose 
titles promise little. All depends on the spirit in 
which he reads. He will find 'homely' matters, 
where he least expects them — but he must look for 
them with an American eye and cherish them in an 
American heart. 

A traveller's recollections are never in very good 
taste ; but I may be pardoned for alluding to a visit, a 



14 

few years ago, to the beautiful Temple Church in Lon- 
don — the church, I mean, attached to the Law Asso- 
ciation of the Inner Temple. Wandering there among 
the graves of Knights Templar of ancient days, and 
the rich and varied marble slabs, commemorative of 
dead English lawyers, great and sm. all, those I had 
heard of and those I had not, all emblazoned with 
equal pomp of monumental praise, it is impossible to 
describe the pleasure with which my eye happened to 
light on an humble cenotaph, erected to the memory 
of a young student, bearing a familiar American and 
Philadelphian name, " Philemon Helmsley ;" the 
stone said, " of Queen Anne's County, Maryland, 
who died in London, 1 2th May, 1752, aged 24."* 

And then, my mind travelling back to times of colo- 
nial dependency, which, measuring by the world's 
chronology, were but of yesterday, when American 
students of law thought their education incomplete 
without a year or two in the Temple, or at Lincoln's 
Inn, I thought not so much of the change which the 
lapse of time has worked in this as in everything, but 
of the actual and significant element in our history, 
which the state of times and manners there evolved. 
Standing by the tomb of this American law student, I 
could not but think of the varied learning he, and those 
like him, received in England at that time — not the 

* Mr. Heltnsley, I have since learned, was first cousin of Chief 
.Tiisticp Tilchman. 



15 

mere learning of the law, for that was the least of it, 
but of the unconscious masculine training which the 
intelligent American young man had in what he heard 
and saw every day that he lived in the Metropolitan at- 
mosphere. There are interesting suggestions connected 
with this feature of Colonial life. It is a little chapter 
worth studying. The American students of law in 
London, before the Revolution, were students of high 
principles, which many of them were destined soon 
to call into action. It was their habit to go night 
after night to Parliament, listening to discussions 
of constitutional law from Chatham and Mansfield, 
and that other great constitutional lawyer. Lord 
Camden, whose true fame — thanks to a delight- 
ful living biographer — has but lately been rescued 
from the shade — from Dunning and Conway, from 
Burlve and Barre — from all the great men who then 
were fighting for British liberty, violated in America.* 
While some of these students came back from Eng- 

* Let nie here make a most sincere acknowledgment of the plea- 
sure afforded on this side of the Atlantic by Lord Campbell's Chan- 
cery Biographies. His Life of Lord Camden is a late, though hearty 
tribute to the memory of one of England's greatest statesmen. — Two 
other Biographies (not professional) have yet to be written, if Ame- 
rican lame is worth having — Lord Shelburne's and General Con- 
Way's. One of Colonel Barre is, I observe, in progress. An At?iC' 
rican Life of Chatham, well executed, would be a most desirable con- 
tribution to History. 



16 

land, Loyalists, there were many who, thus schooled, 
returned thorough out and out American patriots. 
One may easily imagine a young American in Lon- 
don, poring over his law books in seclusion all 
day, with no news from a distant home but mur- 
murs and hopeless complaint — of rights violated and 
interests trampled under foot — feeling, in the op- 
pressive atmosphere around him, all the insolence of 
metropolitan authority and prejudice; but at night 
crowding his way into the gallery of Parliament, to 
hear debates on American affairs — to hear such a voice 
as that of William Pitt utter the electric words '' I re- 
joice that America has resisted T' to see the historical 
tapestry of St. Stephen's flutter at his tones, and 
Mansfield and the ministerial lawyers tremble at his 
frown. The hearts of the young American law stu- 
dents as they wandered, those nights, home to their 
chambers, must have swelled proudly at the recollec- 
tion of such words as these. It was a noble training 
to study law in this fashion and in those days. 

I do not mean to say, that the sight of Mr. Helm- 
sley's tombstone suggested all this train of thought, 
but his name and birth-place, crowded as it was amidst 
strange and prouder monuments, had an interest which 
it would be affectation to deny. 

And so it is with study, for if, I repeat, the senti- 
ment, or the sympathy with what is American, be in 
the reader's heart, there is no occasion to limit or re- 



17 

strain excursive intellectual wandering. Let me, so 
far as I can within brief limits, illustrate what I 
mean by references to books, read in the hurried 
moments of professional leisure, — those brief, bright 
moments, late at night and just before tea-time, — which 
lawyers can have, if they choose to claim them, but 
which lawyers now-a-days seem ashamed to admit 
they can command. 

Take, for example, a celebrated British author, who 
the casual reader will say is least likely of all others to 
suororest thoug-hts of America?! interest. I mean, and 
the choice is made very much at random, Dean Swift, 
the Tory Ecclesiastic of the days of Queen Anne. 
Reading what Swift wrote, with a desire and curiosity 
to see something bearing on us and our interests, one 
cannot fail being struck with the variety of its sugges- 
tions. 

Swift, as we all know, was one of those prodigies 
of ineffectual genius, which the experiment of Provi- 
dence is continually evolving for our guidance or ad- 
monition, who with talents adequate to any exigency, 
or any result, came to the end of a long and turbulent 
career, leaving no bright mark behind him. The ne- 
glected volumes in which his multitudinous works 
are contained, with all the fascination of the most 
charming of biographers and critics, are rarely stu- 
died, except by the curious belles-lettres scholar. 
The satire is daily becoming more difficult of appre- 

3 



18 

elation, the heart-breaking mysteries of Stella and Va- 
nessa every day less interesting, and the truth is, as a 
general observation, we know the once illustrious Dean 
as a disappointed pamphleteer and nothing more. 

Yet if the student, led by any stray impulse, reads 
Swift's life and writings, with the American tendency 
I have spoken of, he will find, (at least so it seems to 
me,) much of peculiar interest. 

His biographer states, on what authority I am un- 
able to say, that about the year 1707, when Swift was 
a Whig, and a friend of Addison and Lord Somers, it 
was proposed he should accompany Governor Hunter 
to America, and be consecrated "Bishop of Virginia.* 
Now, had Swift, with his turbulent spirit and charac- 
teristic detestation, of political tyranny and misrule, 
come to these Colonies, what a different career might 
his have been, and how much wider and greater his 
fame, had his eloquence been evoked on this stage — a 
Nation, not a party, to applaud the swelling act, — in- 
stead of the narrow one of Dublin politics; but the 
offer of such a mitred exile, to a man of Swift's ambi- 
tion, was too closely akin to insult to be submitted to. 
If made, it was, no doubt, contemptuously declined ; 
and it is curious to see what he, and others of his day, 
(the golden age of English Literature,) thought of us 
Americans — and as we may infer, of such a mission. 



* Scott's Life of Swift, chapter ii. p. 85. 



19 

Vindicating the people of Ireland from some metropo- 
litan oppression, he breaks out, as if unable to control 
the insolence of his spirit, and the utter scorn with 
which an Englishman of those times looked down 
on us: 

" It is clear that some ministers are apt to look 
down, from their high elevation, on this kingdom of 
Ireland, as if it were only one of our colonies of out- 
casts in America'' "^ 

Thus spoke the Irish ecclesiastic of those days, re- 
flecting, no doubt, the popular sentiment of the time ; 
and may not the American student find something 
here worthy of a moment's complacent meditation? 
In little over a century from the time these words of 
scorn were uttered, by one of England's wisest men, 

* Scott's Swift, vol. vii. p. 25. Dryden, in the Hind and Pan- 
ther, has some vigorous, though coarse lines, on the colonial system 
of his day : 

" Here let my sorrow give my satire place, 
To raise new blushes on the British race; 
Our sailing ships like common sewers we use. 
And through our distant colonies ditfuse 
Tiie draught of dungeons and the stench of stews, 
Whom, when their home-bred honesty is lost. 
We disembogue on some "far Indian"' coast. 
Thieves, pandars, palliards, sins of every sort. 
These are the manufactures we export; 
And these the missioners our zeal has made, 
For with my country's pardon, be it said. 
Religion is the least of all onr trade." 



20 

an American frigate, chartered by the charity of those 
very " outcasts," lay at anchor in the Cove of Cork, 
dispensing iier bounty to save Ireland from starvation, 
and the Royal standard of a Queen, ten times more 
powerful and ten thousand times more queen-like than 
Queen Anne, gracefully and gratefully saluted Ame- 
rican grain ships, hastening through the Irish channel 
on an errand of mercy to her subjects. 

Scorning, or unable to secure an American mitre, 
thwarted by the antipathy of the Queen, who, in heart 
a Stuart, never forgave the Tale of a Tub, Swift at 
last took refuge in an Irish Deanery, and then it was 
that, thrust in exile among a people he detested, he 
wrote the political works which, among his country- 
men, have immortalized his name. He wrote the 
Drapier's Letters to arouse Ireland against metropolitan 
oppression — not only against Wood's half-pence, but 
their principle — against oppression which legislated 
for her without her consent, taxed her, cut off her 
manufactures, restricted her commerce, screwed tighter 
that great engine of colonial tyranny, the Navigation 
Act — in short, (and this is the application) did every- 
thing towards Ireland which, forty years later, made 
the American Revolution. If ever History suggests 
a prototype, here it is — the chief difference being, 
that Sir Robert Walpole was wiser than George 
Grenville, and that Ireland was not America. 

It is in this relation especially; — I wish I had time 



21 

to do more than hint at it — that the student, read- 
ing Swift's forgotten volumes in an American spirit, 
will realize what I have said — and here, in the dark 
perplexity of Irish politics — that from which, then and 
now, every one shrinks back disgusted, will be found 
a germ of the mighty struggle which created this Ke- 
public. The statutes against which Swift raised his 
voice of effectual remonstrance, were the same in prin- 
ciple as those which, for years, oppressed America, and 
which, quite as much as the speculative question of 
Taxation, led to the overthrow of Imperial powder 
here.* The machinery of resistance, too, non-impor- 
tation and non-consumption, was the same. Some of 
Swift's very phrases, their origin not probably traced, 
became current coin of American declamation, and 
were habitually used by the pamphleteers of 1775. 
The common one of " uniting as one man'"-\ is to 
be found in the Drapier's Letters, and there, too, 
the student will lind other sentences and phrases 
of captivating power, which sound very much like 
those which, a few years later, were uttered in 
Faneuil Hall and the Court House of Williams- 
burg, in defiance of the same Imperial and impe- 
rious authority. It sounds, for instance, very much 

* The curious reader is referred to the Introduction to Mr. Sabine's 
recent work on the American Loyalists, for an admirable illustration 
of the idea here incidentally hinted at. 

t Scott's Swift, vol. vii. p. 174. 



22 

like American rebellion to hear Swift say to Ireland, 
" The remedy is wholly in your own hands, and, 
therefore, I have digressed a little, in order to refresh 
and continue that spirit among you ; and to let you 
see that by the Laws of God, of Nations, of Nature, 
and of your Country, you are and. ought to be as free 
as your brethren of England."* Or again, when 
rising to a higher pitch of masculine downright elo- 
quence, his agitated spirit, goaded to look towards these 
" colonies of outcasts" as the place of Freedom's re- 
fuge, he says, " For my own part, who am but one 
man, of obscure condition, I do solemnly declare in the 
presence of Almighty God', that I will suffer the most 
igQominious and torturing death, rather than submit 
to receive this accursed coin, or any other that shall be 
liable to the same objections, until they shall be forced 
on me by a law of my own country ; and if that shall 
ever happen, I will transport myself into some foreign 
land, and eat the bread of poverty among a free 

people."! ^ 

There was something very lilte "■ Brother Jona- 
than" in the tone of these remonstrances. And yet 
the courtly wTiter, I mean Sir Walter Scott, who has 
so beautifully described these wrongs and their re- 
dress, who sees in England's commercial treatment of 
Ireland nothing " but a short-sighted mercantile policy, 

* Scott's Swift, vol. vii. p. 183. f Ibid. 



23 

alike impolitic and cruel, more worthy the monopo- 
lizing corporation of some peddling borough than the 
enlightened Senate of a free people," never recognised 
in it the foreshadowing of the kindred blundering 
which aroused American rebellion and made the Ame- 
rican Revolution. At the time, too, few, or none of 
those reputed wise, saw the probable progress of colo- 
nial misgovernment and abuse of metropolitan autho- 
rity ; but there was an observant eye that noted what 
was happening — for one cannot fail to be struck with 
the coincidence, that at the very period when Swift was 
hurling defiance in the face of Walpole and his col- 
leagues, and vindicating the wrongs of his provincial 
countrymen against Parliamentary oppression, there 
was a poor American printer, lodging in a by-street of 
London, who was watching the struggle closely, and 
no doubt, laying up in a mind that grasped and re- 
tained everything, the Dean's lessons of resistance for 
future use in this distant region. During the period 
when Swift was publishing the Drapier's Letters and 
other pamphlets in defence of Ireland, Doctor Frank- 
lin was on his first visit to England, a vigilant and re- 
flective watcher of the scene before him ; and then it 
was that one of those odd incidents of variety occurred 
which mark his singular career — which brought him, 
too, in contact with one of the Drapier's nearest 
friends. 

" One of these days," says Franklin, •' I was, to my 



24 

surprise, sent for by a great man I knew only by 
name, Sir William Wyndham," (Wyndham, all will 
remember as the Tory leader of his day, the friend 
of Bolingbroke and patron of Swift,) "and I wait- 
ed upon him. He had heard, by some means or 
other, of my swimming from Chelsea to Blackfriars, 
and of my teaching a young man to swim in a 
few hours. He had two sons about to set out on 
their travels, and he wished to have them first 
taught swimming, and proposed to gratify me hand- 
somely if I would teach them. They were not yet 
come to town, and my stay was uncertain, so I 
could not undertake it. But from this incident, I 
think it likely, that if I were to remain in England 
and open a swimming-school, I might get a great deal 
of money." 

When Franklin next returned to England, Swift's 
career was over, Wyndham and Bolingbroke were 
dead, and one of the boys, whom Franklin had refused 
to teach to swim, was Earl of Egremont, and had suc- 
ceeded Mr. Pitt as minister of the Crown.* 

Such then, is the use which the American student 
may make, even of a writer like Swift — such the in- 
terest he will find in books which, viewed in other 

* Sparks's Franklin, vol, i. p. 65. The Earl of Egremont's sister 
married George Grenville, and Mr. Grenville's son Thomas nego- 
tiated the Treaty of 1783 with Franklin. Thomas Grenville died 
in 1846, at a very advanced age. 



26 

relations, have none. So with many others, had I 
time to call your attention to them. He will find 
in Lord Chesterfield's Letters — a book of wonder- 
ful wisdom, once extravagantly praised, and now in- 
ordinately depreciated — a brief, but intelligible ana- 
lysis of the Navigation Act of Great Britain, w^ithout 
a precise knowledge of which, no one can pretend to 
know the true grievances of the American colonies — 
in George Selwyn's Letters, curious materials for 
Philadelphia history — in the Life of Jeremy Ben- 
tham, a new eyewitness narrative of Franklin's ex- 
amination before the Privy Council — in Hume's let- 
ters to the Abbe Morellet, the best description of 
Pennsylvania paper currency ; and the coincidence 
is rather curious, that the newspapers brought by 
one of the last steamers from England, and acci- 
dentally read during the preparation of this address, 
contain the report of a meeting held near Birmingham, 
to procure a relaxation of Sir Robert Peel's Bank Act, 
at which one of the orators refers, as an admirable pre- 
cedent, to this very Pennsylvania provincial currency 
as described by Hume — a sort of ante-revolutionary 
relief notes.* 

* Since this Address was delivered, Lord Campbell's Biography of 
Mr. Wedderburn (Lord Loughborough) has appeared. 

Lord Campbell rather exaggerates the effect of the Scotch lawyer's 
invective on Fratiklin. The effect of the outrage was, however, very 
great on this side of the water, and was a predominant element of 

4 



26 

Again, if the American student will follow Hume's 
recent and most agreeable biographer, and collate the 
pages of the first and second edition of his History of 
England, he may trace the progress of his Tory 
Pyrrhonism in the suppression or mutilation of every 
passage w^hich seemed to foretell the enlargement of 
human liberty, either on this or the other side of the 
Atlantic. There is something very curious in it — 
especially so in the contrast between Hume's dispa- 
ragement and the sanguine appreciation, by some of 
his contemporaries, of the destinies of our country. 

In the first edition of Hume's History, the following 
passage — beautiful in the transp^-rent simplicity of its 
diction — occurred ; — speaking of America, he said : 
" The seeds of many a noble state have been sown in 
climates kept desolate by the wild manners of the an- 
cient inhabitants, (but) an asylum is secured in that 
solitary world for liberty and science, if ever the spread- 
ing of unlimited Empire, or the inroads of barbarous 
nations should aorain extino^uish them in this turbulent 
and restless hemisphere." 

When Hume revised his original work, he struck 

Doctor Franklin's popularity, not till then very firmly established at 
home. No American writer, or indeed no one, English or Ameri- 
can, who had studied the yet unexplored subject of our revolution, 
would say, as Lord Campbell says, that the scene at the Privy Coun- 
cil " mainly conduced to the civil war that followed, and to the dis- 
memberment of the Empire." 



27 

the prediction out, and it appears in none of the 
subsequent editions. On the other hand, Horace 
Walpole, writing about the same time, from Straw- 
berry Hill, to Sir Horace Mann, saw the American 
future much more cheerfully. 

" Don't tell me," he writes, " I am grown old, and 
peevish, and supercilious — name the (great men) of 
1774 and I'll submit. The next Augustan age will 
dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will be 
a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, a 
Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton in Peru." Wal- 
pole's predictions of 1774, now in 1847 when Boston 
has its great historian, and the flag of those who speak 
the English language, is flying on every plain of 
Mexico, and from the headlands of California, seem 
very like trustworthy prophecy.* 

* Letter, November 24, 1774, vol. ii. p. 301. There is extant, I 
may here observe, a letter from Hume to Gibbon, written in October, 
1767, in which the following passage in a very dilferent tone occurs : 
" Why do you compose in French, and carry fagots to the wood, as 
Horace says, with regard to those Romans who wrote in Greek ? I 
grant that you have a like motive to those Romans, and adopt a lan- 
guage more generally diffused than your own native tongue ; but 
have you not remarked the fate of those two ancient languages in 
following ages. The Latin, though then less celebrated, and con- 
fined to more narrow limits, has, in some measure, outlived the 
Greek, and is now become generally understood by men of letters. 
Let the French, therefore, triumph in the present diffusion of their 



28 

One other illustration of this capability of foreign 
history, to throw and borrow light from what we do at 
home, and I pass to other more practical and appro- 
priate views. 

I have referred already to the American students of 
law in England before the Revolution, and to the les- 
sons and principles of statesmanship, which, almost 
unconsciously, not from books but from incidents and 
examples of the times, they were learning. These, 
however, were not always mere politics, nor matters 
relating only to the pending dispute between the Colo- 
nies and the Mother Co^3ntry, but lessons of practical 
legislation, which they were enabled to put into action 
in America, long before the sluggish wisdom of Great 
Britain could be reconciled to them. In 1758, oc- 
curred the memorable attempt to extend to all cases of 
illegal restraint the Habeas Corpus act of Charles II. 
Supported by Pitt and Camden, opposed by Mansfield 
and Hard wi eke, it met the fate of all reforms in that 
age of servility, and failed — nor did it become the law 
of England till within our memory — no longer ago than 
1816.* The Pennsylvania reader will be proud in 
knowing, that the amendment of the Habeas Corpus 

tongue. Our solid and increasifig establishments in America, where 
we need less dread the inundation of barbarians, promise a superior 
stability and duration to the English language^ 
* Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. iv. p. 185. 



29 

Act — the chance bulwark of British liberty — in the very 
words which American law students had heard Hard- 
wicke and Mansfield decry and reject it in 1758, and 
which was slowly and reluctantly adopted by Parlia- 
ment only in 1816, was made the law of Pennsylvania 
sixty years ago, on the 18th of February, 1785 — being 
reported from a committee, of which Anthony Wayne, 
of Chester County, was chairman. Pennsylvania was, 
I believe, the first of the American States in this — the 
Massachusetts statute to the same effect, being just 
one month later. 

Thus, then, in these cursory and unconnected illus- 
trations, have I sought to vindicate my theory of study 
from any imputation of narrowness of design. I hope 
I am understood as asking, that only those intellectual 
pursuits should be avoided, which lead the American 
student so far away from the paths which it is the 
design of Providence he must pursue, as to make him 
(and there are many such around us,) a discontented, 
impracticable sentimentalist. His first, and predomi- 
nant study, should be his own homely history. It will 
well repay him, if he knows how to read it, and will 
make him a practical, hopeful, contented American 
man. Take, for example, the single branch of histo- 
rical literature, with which we have direct concern — 
the history of Pennsylvania. Read it with the sym- 
pathies of an American, and see if it may not be made, 
even in its brief antiquity, full of interest. Tf the read- 



30 

ing people of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia were to 
be polled, if those who now hear me — a fair represen- 
tation of the intelligent class of our fellow-citizens — 
were honestly to say what idea they have of the annals 
of their native soil, they would be apt to admit, that 
beyond a few leading facts, they know little about it, 
and perhaps care less — that the only idea they have of 
William Penn is derived from the sombre figure in 
front of the Hospital, or the caricature which, in the 
form of a picture, hangs in the State House — they 
know he landed here — made a treaty with the Indians, 
the site of which is marked by a fragile monument, 
the last news of which was, that it was fast tumbling 
to decay — they know, too, that Dr. Franklin came 
here a poor boy, and printed a newspaper and Poor 
Richard's Almanac — that the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence and the Federal Constitution were signed in 
Philadelphia, and here, in nine cases out of ten, the 
knowledge ends. 

Tell the merchant, as he hurries to or from his 
counting-room, the lawyer, in the hours he wastes 
idling about the Court House, and we do waste a 
o-reat many, — the Divine, as he saunters from one 
theological bookstore or periodical ofl^ice to another, 
his armour riveted, and his weapons of contro- 
versy sharpened anew, — tell any one of the busy 
throng of Chestnut or Second Street, that William 
Penn lived in the old house at the corner of Norris's 



;3l 

Alley — that in one auction store, not far off, was the 
first meetinqr held to resist the Boston Port Bill — and 
in another, a little farther, Patrick Henry made the 
great speeches that immortalize his name, and I very 
much doubt if the throng will pause for a moment, or 
bestow any other thought, than wonder that any one 
cares for such trumpery. 

If, however, they could be tempted, in an American 
spirit, to open even the meagre volumes which we 
have, and I concede they are meagre and imperfect, 
they would find them deeply interesting. They would 
find in them, too, what they do not dream of — not the 
illustration of an isolated branch of knowledge — not 
mere local or narrow provincial annals, but closely in- 
terlaced, the connexion being more visible every day 
that passes, with the men and the events of Transat- 
lantic story, and they would feel, the more in all these 
relations it is studied, pride in their simple domestic 
institutions becoming more rational and better founded. 

I repeat, ours is no merely isolated provincial story. 
If you will excuse me for so long trespassing on your 
attention, the task is not difficult to show what I 
mean, and what its actual relations are, and always 
have been, to the greater and more attractive world 
abroad, to the familiar events of British and Conti- 
nental story. 

There is, as it seems to me, a long and dreary period 
of British hislorv, from the death of Cromwell to the 



3'2 

birth of the first WiUiam Pitt, when the world, and 
especially that part of it with which we had relations, 
seemed unable to produce a single great, or complete, 
or picturesque character — the long, cheerless day of 
political churchmanship — of kings lying to their sub- 
jects, especially as to religion — of ministers trafficking 
with foreign pow-ers — of the French monarch buying 
one English king, and giving alms to another — of 
patriots receiving money from abroad — of heroes, like 
Marlborough, betraying their master, and corre- 
sponding with an adverse Pretender — the days when 
Milton was proscribed and neglected, and Dryden 
and Pryor w^ere petted and patronised. Such is 
this long chapter of transatlantic story. But it was 
then that, on this side of the ocean, the growth of 
a new race of men, and a new Nation was silently 
beginning "the vigorous race of undiseased mankind," 
and year after year was bringing some new emigra- 
tion, each differing from that which had come before, 
and all destined, in a few years, to be welded together 
and form the great social union from w^hich this Re- 
public has grown. This history of emigration, begin- 
ning with Virginia and ending with Georgia, is full of 
untold interest, and between these two points of time, 
— almost equidistant, — was the arrival of William Penn 
here. ' 

Let those who decry our limited provincial story, 
and think nothing interesting that is not connected 



8;i 

with the greater and more turbulent European world, 
see who William Penn was, and what part he really 
played on the world's great theatre. It is to be 
lamented, that biography has not yet done its ap- 
propriate work for this singularly great man, and 
that even his eulogists have not defined precisely 
his true and varied merits. With the exception 
of Mr. Fisher's beautiful discourse, delivered some 
years ago before this Society, on Penn's private cha- 
racter, and a series of clever articles, lately published 
in a periodical called the Friend, I am not aware of 
any elaborate attempt at accurate illustration of his 
character. To his benevolence and purity, perhaps to 
his statesmanship, full justice has been done, but his 
scholarlike ability has not had the praise it deserves, 
and some day will receive. We talk habitually of the 
days of Addison and Swift, or of the older and more 
robust writers of the Restoration, but we never care to 
remember, that intermediate to both schools, there 
lived one man, whose style, in all the peculiari- 
ties of English vigour and beauty, rarely has been 
surpassed. Penn was really a great writer of his 
times — the extracts from his letters and public papers 
glisten like bright gems on Proud's russet, uncouth 
pages, and I could easily select passages, the beauty 
of which is most remarkable. Observe, for instance, 
the simple and eloquent precision of two sentences, 
taken, at random, from his letter of 1683, to the Free 



34 

Society of Traders — describing his negotiation with 
the Indians, he says : 

" During the time that this person spoke, not a man 
of them was observed to whisper or smile; the old, 
grave ; the young, reverent in their deportment. They 
speak little, but fervently, and with elegance. I have 
never seen more natural sagacity, considering them 
without the help (I was going to say, the spoil) of tra- 
dition, and he will deserve the name of wise that out- 
wits them in any treaty about a thing they under- 
stand." 

Or again : 

" Do not," he says, " abuse them, but let them have 
justice, and you win them. The worst is, that they 
are the worse for the Christians, who have propagated 
their vices, and yielded them tradition for ill and not 
for good things. But as low an ebb as this people are 
at, and as inglorious as their condition looks, the Chris- 
tians have not outlived their sight, with all their pre- 
tensions to a higher manifestation. What good, then, 
might not a good people graft, when there is so dis- 
tinct a knowledge left between good and evil ? I be- 
seech God to incline the hearts of all that come into 
these parts, to outlive the knowledge of the natives by 
a fixed obedience to the will of God ; for it were mise- 
rable, indeed, for us to fall under the censure of the 
poor Indian's conscience, while we make profession of 
things so far transcending." 



^ 



35 

And there is nothinof in our lang^uao^e, it seems to 
me, more strikingly beautiful than the Introduction or 
Preface to Penn's Frame of Government. He was a 
scholar, a ivriting orator. He was in the highest and 
best sense, a courtier and a gentleman — and had not 
his genius lighted and sunk in the Serbonian bog of 
theological controversy, from the gloomy edge of which 
the most adventurous student recoils dismayed, Penn 
would have been among the popular classics of our 
literature. Every word of his political writings, his 
familiar letters — all, in short, that was popularly writ- 
ten, justify this praise. 

The history of his career, from his birth in 1644 till 
his death in 1718, might be made the history of Eng- 
land, for though a contemned sectary, he was the friend 
and confidant of England's king at the crisis of her 
fate — at a change of dynasty. This was Penn's mis- 
fortune. The Stuarts, like the Bourbons, seemed not 
only born to ill luck themselves, but born to drag their 
friends down to ill luck with them, and Penn's fidelity 
to James H. and his family, was the controlling misfor- 
tune of his life. It took him, and it kept him from his 
colony. The striking language of the first sentence of 
the Frame of Government has an application to him- 
self, and the necessity of actual presence here which 
he did not think of. 

"While he stood here," he says, "all went#v'ell. 
There was no need of coercive or compulsive means — 



36 

the precept of divine love and truth in his bosom was 
the guide and keeper of (their) innocency." 

And sad indeed was it for Penn and for Pennsyl- 
vania, that, having planted the seed, he did not remain 
to watch the growth, but was willing, or compelled to 
return to the purlieus of a Court whose master, a selfish 
and cold-hearted bigot and libertine, never thanked 
or remembered the fidelity of any follower. The spe- 
culation is hardly a vain one, that had Penn remained 
here, his personal influence would have saved us from 
the miserable perplexities of our early politics — those 
wretched squabbles, which have lasted in some form 
from that day to this, and have produced and are pro- 
ducing their natural fruit, in that elevation of medio- 
crity and depreciation of intellectual distinction, which 
makes Pennsylvania a byword. One legacy our first 
settlers certainly have left us — poor politics — ^jealous, 
ungenerous, disparaging politics. I know nothing 
more painful than some chapters of our early local 
history, and those, too, which describe what occurred 
while Penn was living. We read of Hannah Penn's 
yearly visits of condolence to the Court of the exiled 
Stuarts, and her assiduous kindness to the widowed 
Queen, Mary of Modena.* We find Penn himself, 

* Miss Strickland's Queens of England, vol. ix. p. 345, " Every 
year Mrs. Penn, the wife of James's former protege, th-e founder of 
Penn%lvania, paid a visit to the Court of St. Germain's, carrying 
with her a collection of all the little presents which the numerous 
friends and well-wishers of James II. and his queen onuld muster." 



37 

after his day of severe probation, during the reign of 
William III., a favoured subject of Queen Anne, and 
in the very year that he wrote his memorable letter of 
expostulation, eloquent in its very querulousness, on 
the treatment of James Logan by the Colonial politi- 
cians, and when, more than ever, we might wish him 
here to quiet these difficulties and disturbances, we 
find him the organ of Court favour at home, the means 
by which men, destined to become great, approached 
the throne, and secured the favour of the minister. 
Swift, in his journal to Stella, thus describes an even- 
ing of joyous conviviality with Penn. It was at the 
house of Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, and the 
triumphant statesman, fresh in his victory over Somers 
and Godolphin. 

" The porter told me his master was just gone to 
dinner with much company, and desired I would come 
an hour hence, which I did, expecting to hear Mr. 
Harley was gone out ; but they had just done dinner. 
Mr. Harley came out to me, brought me in, and pre- 
sented me to his son-in-law. Lord Dublane, and his 
own son, and among others, to Will Penn, the Qua- 
ker : we sate two hours, drinking as good wine as you 
do; and two hours he and I were alone." 

Surely, it is no unfair disparagement of Penn's true 
fame, to wish he had then been here, watching closely 
over the budding^ energies of his infant and distracted 
settlement. James Logan was a truer, steadier friend. 



38 

better worthy his companionship than Oxford, or Bo- 
hngbroke, or Swift, or any of the false courtiers of this 
falsest of courts. But Penn's dfestiny was that of a 
hopeless absentee. 

There is one familiar incident connected with Penn 
and the foundation of this colony, to which the occur- 
rences of recent times have given rather peculiar in- 
terest. It has been of late the fashion in Great Bri- 
tain to revile with especial ribaldry our state of Penn- 
sylvania as the arch-repudiator of the world, and those 
can attest the severity of the sarcasm, who, in the 
hour of merited opprobrium, happened to be abroad. 
So long as we deserved the obloquy (and there was a 
period when we unquestionably did) — all retort on the 
delinquencies of others was in the worst possible taste. 
There was but one thing for the American man of 
honour to do — to submit in silence. But now, that, 
by an effort, the merit of which we only know who 
feel every day how hard it is to keep the mutinous 
blood of young Democracy from some exorbitance — 
how much harder to bring it back when it has once 
gone wrong — now that we have, in a great measure, 
restored our credit, we have a right, if we please, to 
open the volume of history, and with the record try to 
stop the mouths of persevering ill nature. Doing so, 
we find that Penn's plan of colonising America had its 
origin in a stupendous Government repudiation, along- 
side of which Pennsylvania's brief omission to pay her 



39 

interest shrinks into insignificance. His latest bio- 
grapher thus describes it. 

"The favour of the king, Charles II., and of his 
brother, the Duke of York, had been freely sought, by 
the dying Admiral for his son, and freely promised. 
But William Penn had a claim more substantial than 
a Royal promise of those days. The crown was in- 
debted to the estate of Admiral Penn for services, loan 
and interest, to the amount of £ 16,000. The exche- 
quer, under the convenient management of Shaftes- 
bury, would not meet the claim. Penn, who was en- 
gaged in settling the estate of his father, petitioned the 
King, in June, 1680, for a grant of land in America as 
a payment for all this debt."* 

This is a very gentle account of a very ugly trans- 
action. Admiral Penn was no pensioner on the bounty 
of the crown, but had as good a claim on the Royal 
Treasury as ever a holder of a five per cent, bond has 
had on ours. Not .only was the gallant old sailor's 
pay 'heavily in arrears, but we read in Pepys's diary 
of 20th and 30th August, 1667, the following entries, 
which show to what degrading necessities Royalty 
was once reduced, and that part of Penn's debt was 
that which honest insolvency always protects — a debt 
for borrowed money. " Sir William Coventry," says 
Pepys, "fell to discourse of retrenchments. He do 

* Memoir of Ponn, by Mr. Ellis, in Sparks's American Biography. 



40 

tell me he hath propounded how the charge of the 
Navy in peace shall come within £200,000, by keep- 
ing out twenty-four ships in summer and ten in win- 
ter. He did single out Sir William Penn and me, 
and desired us to lend the king some money." 

'' August 30. At Whitehall, I met with Sir George 
Downing, who tells me that Sir William Penn had 
offered to lend £500, and I tell him of my £300 which 
he would have me to lend on the credit of the latter of 
the act ; but I understand better, there being no de- 
light in lending money to be paid by the king two 
years hence." 

And Pepys was right, for in little more than two 
years from that time, the king closed the Exchequer 
and repudiated debts quite as meritorious as those 
which modern times, in the wildest and most specula- 
tive extravagance, have created, and as we have seen, 
Admiral Penn's executor, thirteen years later, was 
content to take a colonial grant — in plain English, 
what we would call, back lands — in liquidation of this 
repudiated debt of honour.* 

Thus it is, (and I have had time barely to hint at it) 

* Whether it is as some sort of compensation for this injustice to 
the old Admiral, or as an acknowledgment of our founder's fidelity 
to the House of Stuart, who are, it seems, among the oddities of the 
day, coming into fashion again, I do not know, but I observe among 
the decorations of the new Houses of Parliament, the only real Ame- 
rican subject illustrated is Penn's Treaty with the Indians, 



41 

that the opening chapter of our provincial history, 
which describes the personal career of Penn and his 
contemporaries — is full of the most remarkable and 
picturesque incidents of times which certainly were 
not barren of interest. I shall be content if any one 
who hears me can be induced to think so. 

Penn died in 1718, and then it was, as he descended, 
the victim of misfortune and disappointment, to his 
grave, that the career of the luckiest man that ever 
lived — wonderful in his ability, most wonderful in his 
success, began to unfold itself. Dr. Franklin was 
twelve years old Avhen William Penn died, and five 
years later, he rambled to Philadelphia, and from the 
moment that he came he identified himself with us 
and ours — our history, our prosperity, our destiny. 
He is part and a most illustrious part of Pennsylvania 
history, and I cannot relinquish the hope, that a Penn- 
sylvania man will some day do justice to his yet ne- 
glected biography. There are many who have Frank- 
lin's blood in their veins — who share, too, the rich 
inheritance of his genius, who well can do it. We 
may contemn and disparage hereditary pride — not the 
vulgar sentiment called pride of family, but the pride 
of hereditary talent and patriotism — as we please, it 
is the fashion of the times to do so ; but there is in 
the succession of talent and virtue something attrac- 
tive. There is something, at least, picturesque in see- 
ing, as we have seen, one living Imeal descendant of 

G 



42 

Pennsylvania's first and great philosopher, entrusted 
by the Nation with the execution of a gigantic scheme 
of scientific beneficence — measuring from mountain to 
mountain, and headland to headland, the boundaries 
of a continent — and another, the close bond of affec- 
tionate brotherhood only broken by death, perishing a 
martyr to science amidst the howling hurricane of the 
Gulf Stream. And here let me pause and say, citizens 
of Philadelphia, to you — that it is a discredit to Phila- 
delphia, that one of her gallant sons, a brave officer, 
born and bred here, a great grandson of our Frank- 
lin, dying, not on the field of battle, but in the dis- 
charge of duties of peaceful and philanthropic science, 
should have perished almost within hail of the capes 
of the Delaware, and not one word of pubhc testimony 
be uttered — no official act of honour be done to his 
memory. Such neglect is injustice to ourselves.* 

The two lives of Penn and Franklin, covering more 
than a century, contain all the history of our State that 
can yet be written. And what a narrative is this of 
Franklin. We are apt enough to talk of him as of 
Washington, in stereotyped terms of vague enthu- 
siasm, but rarely do we meditate on the detailed inci- 
dents, the peculiarity of those ninety years of Penn- 

* Lieutenant George M. Bache, of the U. S. Navy, was washed 
overboard and drowned in September 1846, in a gale of wind in the 
Gulf Stream. He was attached, at the time, to the Coast Survey ser- 
vice, of which Mr. A, D. Bache is the distinguished superintendant. 



43 

sylvania life ; the quick transition of great events as he 
ascended slowly and surely the long steep hill of his 
fame — the boy of seventeen sleeping in the Meeting 
House, with one roll of bread in his pocket, and no 
roll of bread in prospect — and then at the distance of 
almost a century, the patriarch going to his grave 
amid the universal mourning of a Nation. It has all 
yet to be written, and whoever writes it writes the his- 
tory of a civilized and enlightened world. I have had 
occasion, in another relation, to refer to an incident of 
Franklin's first obscure visit to Great Britain. Down 
to the period of his second visit, he has described his 
career in his own matchless style of simple English 
writing. And here again, as of Penn, let me say, that 
too high praise cannot be bestowed on Franklin as a 
master of the best of rhetoric, that which, in simple 
and transparent language expresses exact ideas — that 
rhetoric, alongside of which the hyperboles and infla- 
tions of our times are as grotesque and olfensive as 
players' spangles by daylight. I know nothing of in- 
tellectual discipline that would do more good than to 
put our exaggerated, adjective-loving countrymen on 
a strict substantive diet, and to make them study the 
severe model of their ow^n Franklin's style. It is like 
writing by telegraph — no waste, no expletives. It was 
a style that had its root in clear and distinct percep- 
tions ; it was English really undefiled ; it was rhetoric 
that withstood contagion, for while Mr. Jefferson, al- 



44 

ways a sprightly and originally an accurate writer, re- 
turned from France a gallicised English rhetorician, 
Doctor Franklin, who was there much longer, with at 
least equal participation in French intercourse, wrote 
the same good manly English to the latest moment of 
his life. There was in it a peculiarity of graceful pre- 
cision that is scarcely imitable, and if I were asked to 
select specimens of the exact and clear enunciation of 
a thought, or series of thoughts, I might refer to two 
from the pen of Franklin, on which my eye has 
casually lighted, and which, though entirely simple 
and unpretending, seem to me the perfection of good 
English writing. One is his character, in three lines, 
of William Coleman, one of the founders of the Junto. 

" Lastly, William Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, 
about my age, who had the coolest, clearest head, the 
best heart, and the exactest morals of almost any man 
I ever met with." In these few lines, is all of charac- 
teristic praise that pages of modern hyperbole could 
have given, simply and inartificially said, without a 
big word from the beginning to the end of it, the per- 
fection of exact English writing. 

The other, also from Franklin's pen, is what you 
are all familiar with, the Inscription on the corner 
stone of the Philadelphia Hospital. 

In the year of Christ, 

M.D.C.C.L.V. 

George the Second, happily reigning, 



45 

For he sought the happiness of his people ; 

Philadelphia flourishing, 

For her inhabitants were publick spirited. 

This Building, 

By the bounty of the Government 

And of many private persons. 

Was piously founded 

For the relief of the sick and miserable. 

May the God of mercies 

Bless the undertaking. 

Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with all their 
stores of lapidary memorials, may be challenged to 
produce anything more precisely beautiful, more 
clearly significant — that which neither says too little 
nor too much, and says what it does in appropriate 
and not hyperbolised English, than what Franklin 
thus traced on this foundation stone. 

Franklin's autobiography ends at the period when 
scenes of wider interest were opening. That record 
he has left for others to complete. When he went to 
England, in 1764, as agent of this colony, he had 
risen, though not to the highest, yet to a platform far 
higher than when, thirty years before, he and Ralph 
had burrowed in obscure London lodgings, and his 
highest aspiration was to teach young noblemen to 
swim. He had now become the associate of Britain's 
really great men — the opposition of that day — the va- 
ried but formidable array of the friends of Chatham 
and Rockingham. He was examined before the House 



46 

of Commons, insulted at the Privy Council, saw the 
enactment and the repeal of the Stamp Act, and re- 
mained in England till every chance of peaceful re- 
dress being over, the time was come for him to return 
to suffer and counsel with his countrymen at home. 

Franklin returned to America in 1776, and just be- 
fore he set out on, as he thought, his last voyage, then 
an old man of nearly seventy years, he wrote from 
London to his son, " I have, of late, great doubts 
whether I shall continue here any longer. I grow 
homesick, and being now in my sixty-seventh year, I 
begin to apprehend some infirmity of age may attack 
me, and make my return impracticable. I have, also, 
some important affairs to settle before my death, a 
period, I ought now to think, cannot be far distant." 
We often read of the frustration of plans founded on 
calculations of long life — but here, in the case of Dr. 
Franklin, the progress of natural decline, of age itself, 
seems to have been arrested, and all the great events 
of his life, his permanent public services, were ren- 
dered after he was self-condemned as unfit to work at 
all. After he was seventy, he signed the Declaration 
of Independence, framed, or aided in framing the first 
constitution of Pennsylvania, again crossed the Atlan- 
tic, and was an actor in the politics of Continental 
Europe, negotiated the alliance with France, signed 
the Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, 
returned home eighty years of age, was elected, and 



47 

for several years served as Governor of Pennsylvania, 
and at last put his name and gave his hearty approval 
to the Federal Constitution which has made us one 
Nation. 

This too is a Pennsylvania career that has yet to be 
written, and this, with William Penn's, I repeat, would 
cover the whole period of the Commonwealth's histo- 
rical existence. It is a discredit to Pennsylvania, to 
her men of talent and scholarship, that the only tole- 
rable biographies of either have been written in New 
England, where William Penn never put his foot, and 
which Franklin abandoned almost when a child. Is 
it because these are Pennsylvania subjects ? Is ^t be- 
cause these were Philadelphia men that they are 
thrown aside and neglected ? 

I am admonished, by a variety of considerations, 
that it is time to bring to a close this rambling, con- 
versational sort of address, — for such I have meant it 
to be. My object has been to show, by a series of ca- 
sual and hardly coherent illustrations, what materials 
the American historical student has to work upon, 
where he must look for them, where he will find them, 
and what aid a Society like this, properly administered, 
may render him. We have disclaimed those solicita- 
tions for pecuniary aid which might discredit us, and 
turn indifference, which we are used to, into aversion. 
A beggar society is worse than a beggar man. But 
we solicit public favour in another form. We ask co- 



4S 

operation and companionship. Having this, we trust 
that the time may come when a new turn will be given 
to public taste, when history, our own history, shall be 
systematically taught, and when the American man of 
intelligence and imagination, will find in its records 
much to interest him. 

My appeal for local history is now made — earnestly, 
anxiously, honestly made. There is in my mind an 
abiding conviction, growing in influence every year I 
live, that it is a wholesome, invigorating study. That 
it strengthens genuine patriotism, and chokes the 
growth of spurious sentiment. That knowledge of 
early American history is the true conservative 
study. That it alone creates and keeps active the 
virtue of loyalty out of the very name of which Re- 
publics have been cheated. That its contrasts show 
us the errors, the follies, the faults of our own day on 
the one hand, and our superiority, — brighter prospects, 
and higher aims on the other. That honestly studied, 
it makes us rationally sanguine of the future, — because 
proud of the past. Feeling all this, it is with me a 
labour of love to try to make others, my fellow-country- 
men, my fellow-citizens, (for I am proud of strong local 
sympathies,) feel and think as I do. I cannot but hope, 
that the appeal to-night will not be utterly in vain. 



APPENDIX. 



THE GRANT TO WILLIAM TENN. 

The following mutilated paper, being Penn's petition a^^ executor 
of his fathci-, and the other minutes, will be found in the printed 
Record or Paper-Book in the case of Penn vs. Lord Baltimore. A 
copy of this record is in the city, in the possession of Thomas 
(rilpin, Esquire. 

" For tjie 
The Humble ad 
Son to Sir W 
Sheweth, 

That having 
In Ireland by the oppression of the Lord 
decease (though most of it remitted by 
to borrow every penny of it, by reason 
England was under the stop of the Ex 
with the growing interest of it, and 9 Ye 
for the relief of his own, and his Mother's 
Ruine. He humbly prays that 

that Princely respect he of 
his compassion to the afflicte 
America lying North of M 
7 



60 

River, on the West, linimit 
extend as far as plantable, 
he doubts not by his Intere 
profitable plantation to the 
to raise that speedy and sufficient 
Incumbrances, that he may 
Debt of, at least 11,000£ and be 
and Time as shall be most 
And 

The foregoing imperfect paper (one-half of it being worn away) 
remains in the books at the Board of Trade, is spoken to by Mr. 
Gellibrand, as Mr. Penn's original petition fbr a grant of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

1680, June 14th. In the Council Chamber, Monday, the 14th of 
June, 1680. Present Lord President, Duke of Albemarle, Bishop 
of London, Mr. Secretary Jenkins, Sir T. Chichley. The Petition 
of William Penn, referred by an order from the Earl of Sunderland 
of the first instant, is read, praying, in Consideration of Debts due 
to him, or his Father, from the Crown, to grant him Letters Patent 
for a tract of Land in America, Lying North of Maryland, on the 
East bounded with Delaware River, on the West limited as Mary- 
land, and Northward to extend as far as Plantable. Whereupon, 
Mr. Penn is called in, and being asked, what extent of Land he will 
be contented with Northerly 1 declares himself satisfied with three 
degrees to the Northwards ; and that he is willing, in lieu of such a 
Grant, to remit his debt, due to him from his Majesty, or some part of 
it, and to stay for the Remainder till his Majesty shall be in a better 
condition to satisfy it : Upon the Whole matter, it is ordered, that 
Copies of his Petition be sent unto Sir John Werden, in behalf of his 
Royal Highness, and unto the Agents of the Lord Baltemore, to the 
end they may report how far the pretensions of Mr. Penn may con- 



51 

sist with the Boundaries of Maryland, or the Duke's propriety of New- 
York and his possessions in those parts. This Exhibit is proved by 
Mr. Gellibrand, 

1680. Oct. 16. For my Honored Friend William Blaythwaite, 
Esq ; Secretary to the Right Honorable the Lords Commissioners for 
Trade and foreign Plantations at Whitehall. Whitehall, 16th Oct. 
(80). Sir, you heretofore wrote to me, touching Mr. William Penn's 
petition, then before the right Honorable the Lords Commissioners for 
trade and Foreign Plantations ; To which I answered you, as at that 
Time I was obliged to do. Since then, Mr. Penn hath represented 
to the Duke his Case and Circumstances (in relation to the reasons 
he hath to expect favor from His Majesty touching that request of 
His) to be such, as that his Royal Highness commands me to let you 
know (in order to your informing their Lordships of it) That he is 
very willing Mr. Penn's request may meet with Success ; that is, 
That he may have a Grant of that Tract of Land which lies on the 
North of New Castle Colony (Part of Delaware) and on the West 
Side of Delaware River, beginning about the Latitude of 40 Degrees, 
and extending Northwards and Westward as far as his Majesty 
pleaseth, under such regulations as their Lordships shall think fit. 

I am, Sir, Your Very Humble Servant, Jo. Werden. This is 

proved by Mr. Gellebrand." 



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